


Obito is not a hero (but he's going to save the world)

by tripletmoons



Category: Naruto
Genre: Fix-It, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-01 21:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14529927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripletmoons/pseuds/tripletmoons
Summary: “He’s monologuing, Naruto.” Sakura sighs, long-suffering. “You and Sasuke are only with each other all the time. Don’t you know an Uchiha monologue when you see one?”





	1. Chapter 1

Obito has been the shadow in the corner of the room all across the continent, in every hidden village and at every level. For decades, he made puppets of kings and kages. For _decades_ , he dedicated himself to the genocides in Kiri, the creation of the greatest mercenary force known to man, the collection of the tailed beasts, the end of the goddamn world.

He’s the one that broke everything, or, at least, hastened the breaking.

He’s the last person that should be asked to fix it 

“-Are you even listening to me? Obito? Hey, _Obito_!”

“He’s monologuing, Naruto.” Sakura sighs, long-suffering. “You and Sasuke are only with each other _all the time._ Don’t you know an Uchiha monologue when you see one?”

“I’m not with Sasuke all the time!” Naruto sputters, flailing. “Why would I want to spend my time with an asshole like-.”

“By all the gods, Naruto. You’re literally dating him! I’m pretty sure you like that he’s an asshole.” Her voice turns sly. “That or maybe you just like his-.”

“Enough.” Obito snaps, desperately cutting her off. Once Sakura and Naruto really get going they never goddamn stop and it always, inevitably, digresses into talk about Naruto’s sex life. With Obito’s _cousin_. It gives him whiplash and is easily one of the weirdest coping mechanisms he’s ever seen, and this is coming from a man that _fucked with S-Class Missing Nin for fun._

Naruto’s face goes from embarrassed to still and serious in a heartbeat. It doesn’t matter that there are no more villages left to lead, no more Shinobi; it doesn’t matter that Naruto looks half-dead and dead-tired. He’s still every-inch a kage. He looks like Minato-sensei, Obito thinks, and familiar rage _hate_ guilt sweeps in like the tide 

“Listen, Obito. You’ve got to do it, okay.” Naruto says, face softening. Not imploring, but sympathetic. Even now he’s just so understanding, so full of compassion. Obito can’t understand it. “There is no other option. There is no one else.”

“There’s Kakashi.” Obito offers, a little desperate. 

Sakura looks up from where she’s operating on Kakashi’s stomach, her face unimpressed. “Kakashi won’t be kick-starting a massive jutsu anytime soon, even if he does have the eye for it.”

“Look I’m not a hero, okay. I’m the one that broke the world. I’m the one that did _this_.” He snarls, sweeping out a hand to encompass the cave they’re in, the dying world outside, the canvas of his numerous mistakes.

“Oh, we know.” Sakura murmurs, almost too quiet to be heard. Her focus is back on Kakashi, on the glowing green hands sweeping across his abdomen. Obito wonders if it’s because she cannot look at him. (He’s familiar with that feeling.) 

“If you know then why are you asking?”

Sasuke sweeps into the cave in a swirl of bloodied fabric, katana in hand and eyes spinning red. “Because, _cousin_ , we are running out of time _._ ” He growls, clearly upholding Clan tradition of being a drama queen. Sakura catches the look on his face and visibly  _judges_.

Naruto’s gaze jumps to Sasuke and now Sasuke is the one softening. “How close is-.”

“We’ve got two days, maximum.”

Naruto nods, breathes, and turns back to Obito, pinning him under an unrelenting, unending stare. “You are our last chance.” He says, and the weight of that hits Obito like a brick.

Sakura steps away from Kakashi, hands dimming. “You’re a Shinobi and you have a mission.” She says, obviously tag-teaming now that she’s smelled weakness. “It’s as easy as that.”

“Easy, you say.” Obito mutters and it’s so hilarious, so fucking funny. Uchiha Obito is their last chance, the world’s last chance, and time-travel is _easy as that._ Laughter claws its way from his throat, rasping and unpracticed and more than a little mad. 

Naruto must see acquiescence somewhere in Obito _while he’s loosing it_ because he sweeps up his Fuinjutsu ink and strides to the mouth of the cave, Sasuke at his heels.

Sakura waits until Obito’s done, his sides heaving as his giggles sputter out. Her stare is cold and cutting. She hates him, he knows. Hates him in a way that even Sasuke, whose clan he helped exterminate, doesn’t. In a way that Naruto, whose parent’s he killed, definitely doesn’t. She hates him for them, he thinks.

“We may be asking you to save the world, but we aren’t asking for a hero.” She says. _Because you’re no hero,_ she doesn’t say, but they both know. “And maybe, by doing this, you can start to make up for what you’ve done.”

She leaves and it’s just him and Kakashi in a cave. Time is a circle, he thinks, and has the urge to laugh again.


	2. Chapter 2

He lands in the woods, crashing through branches and onto the forest floor like a sack of rocks. The impact sends agony lancing through his body and he turns to the side to vomit. His chakra-sense is going crazy, blurred by pain and nigh incomprehensible. _Are those civilians or bushes way over there?_ He opens his eyes and the world spins around him, a nauseating swirl of greens and browns and chakra-sight, and then he’s on his back again, half in his own sick. Pain spikes all across his bruise-body, fire igniting his nerves-. 

Obito doesn’t die. On a scale from stabbed-by-kunai to crushed-by-rocks, he wakes up feeling like a solid three and smelling of vomit. But he’s not dead and he hasn’t been moved while unconscious. _Promising_.

He taps into his chakra-sense, kind of mind melding with the trees around him, and _reaches_. Bile climbs up his throat _as he just keeps going_ and he clamps down on a surge of panic. He breaths in, smells vomit, and breaths out, reaching for knife-sharp calculation and calm.

Here are the facts as he knows them: he is alone, he is in a forest, he is  _not_ where he should be _._

There is no cave near by, _no_ _mountains_ , nothing familiar; there is just a massive, sprawling stretch of trees. Kami, he’s not anywhere near Iwa anymore, in fact-. He peers through the darkness at the surrounding woods and _yep_ those trees are commonly found in the Land of Fire.

The jutsu was supposed to spit him out at the same place he left, just a different time, and obviously that didn’t happen. Instead of being anywhere near Iwa, he’s countries away. _Fuck_. Even if he, in general, knows kind of where he is, he doesn’t know _when_ he is.

Kaguya hadn’t wasted time on destroying the land. It was the Shinobi she wanted dead, not the foliage. There were large swaths of the continent she left untouched because no one had been dumb enough to hide from a mokuton-using-alien-goddess in _massive_ _forests_.

He could be _anywhen._

Obito rolls smoothly to his feet, ignoring his bruise-body with the ease of practice, and jumps into the nearest tree, landing on the highest branch to get a clear view of the night sky.

Every Shinobi worth their salt at wilderness survival learns how to navigate by the stars. Obito could transverse the Land of Fire via constellation at thirteen (thanks third great shinobi war). He hones in on the Gliding Crane constellation with the ease of long practice and heads in that direction.

That way lays civilization. At least, so long as he is when he should be and not when he was, with Kaguya bearing down on them and the world dying.

He will find people, or not find people, and plan accordingly from there.


	3. Chapter 3

Obito has been traveling for two days at moderate to high speeds. After being patched together with Zetsu and Hashirama cells his body rarely needs rest. He chaptalizes on that, running through the nights. This means he still aches bone-deep. But more urgent than complete recovery is the need to orient himself, so even his breaks to eat and drink are brief.

It’s midday when he senses it. The edge of his chakra-sense narrows and blurs as trees thin out and right there, at the edge, are people. He pours on speed and a picture comes together: a blurring mass of civilian chakra impressions, all dim and bleeding together. _A village_

A burst of excitment _hope_ bursts through his chest before he can transition fully from the lull of running into mission calm.

Kaguya might not have cared about the land, but she was a village _razer_. All up and down the continent, Shinobi traffic or not, towns burned, turning everyone within them to ash. This place is bigger than a mere town, certainty big enough to burn, and yet it’s here. _It’s here_.

He darts from branch to branch so fast it’s like he’s flying. The fastest man alive. His final leap is a little sloppy as excitment _hope_ bursts again before he can smother it.

There, out across a stretch of grass, is a village bursting at the seams. Tiled roofs peak over one another, sliced through with stone roads thronged by people. Market-crowds and conversation and animal noises all blend together into a indistinct hum. In the distance, a temple looms, gold and jade and ringed with stone dragons.

Obito is a goddamned time traveler. Their madcap dojutsu, fuinjutsu, ninjutsu space-time monstrosity worked. No Kaguya.

He stares greedily at the village. At the people and the place, at the lack of ash and bone. However, the longer he looks, the more the image looks off, distorted. Not quite right. Surreal.

A moment later his mood shatters like glass. His mission calm in the wind, replaced with creeping dread.

His sharingan spins into existence, sharpening the details until they cut. All of the people, the once familiar people, are wearing homespun clothing in mass, dressed in aged fashions and unfamiliar styles. There is no sign of electricity or piping, no sign of the modern utilities common in large, established villages. More than a few of the villagers carry tools Obito saw in textbooks depicting the Warring States Period.

_The Warring States Period_

Dread sinks its claws in. Panic surges in his chest, pushing against his ribs and suffocating. He leans back into the tree, pushing himself through the bark and down onto the grass. His breath comes out high and keening, more gasp than anything. He hunkers down between two roots and proceeds to have a panic attack, his first in three months.

It’s like he’s dying again, a blob of ruptured organs and dusted bones. It’s like waking up on a cot in a cave, with limbs that aren’t his, with scars and skin that twist him unrecognizably, hideously. It’s like Rin is dying, all the light in the world going out, the heat-death of a star. It’s like killing a squad of Kiri ninja in the blink of eye, ripping them apart bear handed and tasting their blood _._ It’s like resurrecting a moon goddess and ending the world and knowing everything is your fault and Rin would hate you.

It’s all of that, all at once, and he’s crying ( _crybaby ninja_ ) and heaving and nothing is active but the part of his brain Madara trained, down in the caves, to respond to incoming hostiles. ( _Aversion Therapy, Madara said, grinning)_

He comes back to himself in increments and it’s sundown.

He gets to his knees and then his feet and goes further into the woods. His body feels like it’s freshly wounded, exhaustion weighing on him. Mechanically, he sets up traps, places seals and lays down.

He can think once he wakes up.


	4. Chapter 4

The logistics are this: Obito isn’t familiar with the geopolitics of the Warring States Era, civilian or Shinobi; Obito’s understanding of basic geography is fifty years out of date; Obito doesn’t know where to go for information or weapons or armor or clothing; Obito _doesn’t know where Zetsu is_.

He was meant to come flying out of the space-time jutsu right after the Third Great Shnobi War. Right around then Zetsu, Madara and his younger-self were all in that thrice-be-damned cave, right where he could find them all and kill two of them. Plus, even if they ran, he knew the terrain, knew all the hidey-holes.

Now, he doesn’t even know where _he_ is. (Does this village even exist in the future or is it one of the many decimated by time ands/or the first two Great Wars?)

Overshooting his target time by a couple decades still freaks him out (how did this even happen?), but he was trained to take down nations, he can salvage this 

Mission is still go. 

The logistics are this: Obito is non-entity here, he doesn’t exist and no one is worrying about him; the Senju and the Uchiha are feuding _somewhere_ in the land of fire; Zetsu approaches Madara sometime before the founding of Konoha.

His thoughts whirl, plans assembling and reassembling, solidifying into this: _bait._

_He can use Madara as bait._

He has no way to track Zetsu, but the Uchiha and Senju conflict is much bigger than one man and, if he remembers correctly, _loud_. Once he finds the warring clans, he finds Madara. Then all he has to do is wait. Zetsu will come to him, eventually. Will have to in order to induct Madara into his scheme.

Obito smiles, all teeth, and Kamui’s into the village.

First step: blend in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, these chapters are all very short but that is because I am posting them as I write them. Seat of my pants, I swear, I write em' and then post em'. A recipe for disaster (or an eventually unfinished work). But at least I'm having fun!


	5. Chapter 5

His intention was to establish a long-term cover, one to gather contacts under, to create a limited reputation for.

He _was_ going to establish himself as a wandering mercenary, one new to the Land of Fire with average skills; the kind of person often hired to take out low-level bandits and the like. Under _that_ cover, he could get in contact with people to help him resupply and gather necessary ninja things without being remembered. (No one remembers the average looking low-level mercenaries, they don’t come with a long life expectancy _.)_

However, there were snags to that plan. A lot of snags.

In his time, it was easy to establish a backstory using a contrived mercenary cover. Easier than making up a face was stealing one from someone else. Usually someone he _retired._

He cannot steal or make up faces here, not with henge/genjutsu, not long-term. Not with the Uchiha and Senju running about, not with him intending to gather information on them, not with him wanting to develop contacts in the same circle as them. 

One of the reasons Madara pushed Obito to kill the Uchiha, outside of holding a truly  _massive_  grudge, is because they were- _are_ the genjutsu experts. Any Jonin level Uchiha worth their salt can see a genjutsu’d face a mile away. Using one was like wearing a neon sign saying _I’m here to kill you._ The Senju of this time are another problem. They’ve waged war on the Uchiha for decades and likely know all of the tricks and how to see through them. Wearing a henge, a high-level one, would definitely be a tip them off too.

So, he can’t pretend to be a mercenary by genjutsu-ing himself to look like someone else. Not for long-term information gathering. 

He also cannot _not_ use a disguise. That’d be like wearing a henge except for the fact that _everyone_ would be able to see his face, not just the Uchiha and Senju he _might_ come across that _might_ know how to cancel the technique.

Showing his face is not acceptable.

He is visibly Uchiha, with his dark hair and dark eye and moon-pale skin. What’s worse is that he’s a strange Uchiha with whorl scars, skin grafts, and _a fucking_ _bright purple Rinnegan eye_. (Which yeah, he can cover with an eye-patch but even with the eye covered he’s still a fucked-up looking Uchiha.)

That left two things: masks and makeup (plus an eye-patch).

He found face paint and lip paint and eye paint in the local red lights district, laid out all over geisha’s makeup tables, but they’re civilian standard, not Shinobi standard.

He can’t use that shit. Especially not to gather information on _where to find the Shinobi shit he can use._

 So, masks. 

No matter what he does with a mask, it’s conspicuous. Hiding your face instead of disguising it is _always_ noticeable. He can’t pretend to be a low-level mercenary with average skills and expect to go under the radar while _wearing a mask_.

No matter what he does wearing a mask, he is going to be conspicuous. Wearing a mask is an announcement: I’ve got something to hide!

People are going to remember him.

 So, he’s going to have to throw them off and throw them off _hard,_ projecting incompetence and and not-threat like a champion.

He doesn’t want to catch anyone’s eye, not seriously anyway.

_Tobi cover here I come._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All inner-monologue here because Obito lived in a cave for years with only a aloe-vera-alien, even for an Uchiha he has mastered ranting to himself.


	6. Chapter 6

Obito stares down at the mask. It stares back up, orange grin fox-sly.

Time is a circle, he thinks, and warps out of the theatre in a blink.

Stark grey stones settle under his feet, rising up around him; abstract steps jutting into the endless dark. Tucked into nearby corners, where stone blocks meet, are the things he gathered ( _stole_ ) from the village: dried food, clothing, a map.

Nothing from his time – the future – came with him. He hadn’t expected them to, really. His dimension is removed from space but not time. In Kamui a second is still a second. 

He sets the mask on the ground where it grins up at him like _I know something you don’t._

He looks at it for a second and just _giggles_ , the pit of emotion in his chest swallowing him up. It looks like an orange fox will be saving the world after all.

(He’s lost it three times in four days. How much can one person take?)

Eventually he falls silent. The mask is still looking up at him with endless, unending eyes. Grinning. Grinning. _Grinning._

He looks away, pressing a chakra-covered finger to the storage seal inked on his forearm. His sealing kit poofs into his hand (one of the few valuables he’d shoved into the skin-seal for the time-trip) and he sits cross-legged on the floor, flipping over the Kitsune mask so he can get at the back of it, his shoulders loosening once he’s out from under that smile.

Despite his– his _past_ with Minato, Obito isn’t good with seals. The seals he does know are the result of endless practice, _years_ of practice. He can put storage-seals into his skin. He can place up rudimentary alert barriers. He can inscribe all of the seals from the back of an ANBU mask.

That’s it. 

The wood of his new mask is smooth and even, a sign of impeccable craftsmanship. A good surface for seals. (There’s a reason he chose this mask and it’s not for the irony.) He dips his brush into the pot of ink and slowly, smoothly presses it to the wood.

He draws up five seals: a seal for one-way transparence; a seal that, when activated, seamlessly sticks the mask to skin; a water proofing seal; an air filtration sea; a chakra lock seal.

When finished, he is left with a serviceable mask, if an unimpressive one.

A real ANBU mask is beyond his skill level. The Konoha ANBU MaskMakers are-were- _will be_ craftsmen. They didn’t just _ink_ on the seals; they sunk them into the very wood while carving the mask. (Those masks are one of the few things to come out of Konoha he still admires.)

Obito learned the ANBU mask seals the way he learned all seals, by copying a book with his sharingan and replicating them.

His mask is one-third the quality of a MaskMaker’s mask, if that. (Explains how his old mask broke once in the middle of a massive battle. That shit never happened to fucking ANBU.)

He lays out his work to dry and stands, stripping down to his body-glove and under-armor. Technically, for the sake of historical accuracy and blending in, he should strip all the way down. But he likes boxers more than _loincloths_ , his special knife-resistant battle-weave body-glove more than _his bare skin_ , and his armor more than _no armor at all._

His new clothes should cover them anyway.

He tosses his battle kimono over the nearest stone ledge (goodbye old friend) and moves over to pick up the serviceable grey leggings and forest-green short kimono he snatched from a closed up seamstress.

Putting them on does cover almost everything, minus the neck of his body-glove.

When he bends and twists, the lines of his armor are faint, subtle. He picks up his mask, testing the ink for wetness, and lifts it to his face. For a moment he sees nothing, then, with a touch of chakra, the sealing matrix activates and the mask is like a second skin, completely clear.

A couple handsigns later and he’s staring at himself.

His shadow clone poses, flexing his muscles and causing the armor-lines on his arms to jump and shift.

The fox mask laughs at him from his face. _I know something you don’t!_

His shadow clone twirls once, twice, and dispels.

Tobi 2.0 is born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, a lot of Obito talking to himself. This time in Kamui!
> 
> I'm still cranking these chapters out, whittling away at my anxiety a couple words at a time.


	7. Chapter 7

He visits the village one more time, spending a day lurking on roofs, partaking in chakra-enhanced eavesdropping. He hears a few whispers of the Ninja Clans but none of it is viable. They’re all sensationalist and sordid bits of gossip or horror stories, a window into Shingo Village’s understanding of ninja. ( _which is poor_ )

‘I heard there are people up north, in the grassy plains, that bed wolves to produce their children, all of them-.’ _Inuzuka_. ‘My grandmother once met a red-eyed Oni masquerading as a man, it-.’ _Uchiha_. ‘They say the Lord Protector has a guard with fangs, a snake-warrior from river country-.’ _Yashagorō_.

Useless.

The only thing Obito obtains from the village of worth is newfound resolve, okay-ish clothing, a horribly ironic mask and a map of the Land of Fire.

After Obito decides further roof lurking is pointless; he ends up pouring over that map, debating his next move.

Shingo Village, where he is now, rests at the corner of the Land of Fire, bordering the untouched wilds of the East. It’s a medium village, compared to other locations on the map, and, as today’s eavesdropping revealed, bare of Ninja. The next nearest villages, of those displayed on paper, are both another day's run, two days for most ninja.

All Obito picked up about those villages today is that Mukawa hosts a minor lord and Niikappu trades with Shingo.

Again, useless.

He wishes he could just Kamui his ass to some of his old haunts, just to see what is happening there in this time, but he can’t. ( _time-fucking-travel_ ) So, his eyes land of the Fire Country Capital and stay there. _Bingo._

If there’s one thing ninja are always tanged up with, it’s politics. (No matter how much they hate it.) The Capital, where the daimyo lives, is guaranteed to draw in ninja like flies to honey. There are no guarantees for the other villages, even the ones with names Obito recolonizes.

But the Capital...

Ninja will be there. Information will be there. In four days, Tobi will be there as well.

 He Kamui’s himself out to a distant river and follows it on foot, map crisp and clear in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot happening here but the story will pick up once our main man hits the capital.


End file.
